This article was originally posted on RealClearScience. It was also co-authored with Tom Hartsfield, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at the University of Texas.

Solar Impulse 2, a solar powered airplane that has enough room for exactly one person (the pilot), has made international headlines as it makes its historic trek around the planet. Media outlets from BBC News to Live Science have described the flight as a “revolution.”

You might be asking, What federal porn subsidy? Fair question. Technically, there isn’t a federal porn subsidy. However, if we borrow some of the logic commonly used by politically driven economists, we can redefine the word subsidy to mean whatever we want. Continue reading →

Desert dwellers are familiar with “dust devils,” tornado-like phenomena that range in size from cute to terrifying. When the sun beats down on dry earth, the ground becomes hot. The surface air warms and rises, leaving behind an area of low pressure that draws in more air. Eventually, a circulating vortex of upwelling hot air forms, and the dust devil is born. Because they are fleeting and haphazard, they cannot be harnessed for energy. Instead, scientists have proposed creating their own dust devils. Continue reading →

Solar power is billed as the energy of the future. However, today, solar power constitutes less than 1% of the global energy market. Though some cynics point their finger at a “Big Oil” conspiracy, the actual explanation for why solar power has remained such a disappointment is much more mundane. The reasons boil down to basic physics, economics, and impracticality. Continue reading →

World events have made it quite clear to most Americans that we should develop more of our own energy sources. Reducing our reliance on foreign oil by exploiting the natural gas under our feet is not only smart foreign policy but also smart environmental policy: Natural gas burns cleaner than coal or oil, and it has already lowered our CO2 emissions. Natural gas is a win for America and the planet. Continue reading →

Propane is the fossil fuel of red-blooded Americans. What poolside or tailgating experience would be complete without firing up the gas grill and torching some meat? (I know, I know… there are charcoal devotees out there.) Even metropolitan mass transit systems are getting in on the excitement. Fleets of buses that run on “LPG” (liquefied petroleum gas) are burning a mixture of propane and butane.

Currently, propane is extracted from natural gas or crude oil. But, in the long run, this is neither a sustainable nor an environmentally friendly practice. Burning propane extracted from the earth is also not carbon-neutral, though it is better than combusting oil or coal. Thus, researchers are looking for ways to produce renewable “fossil fuels” through the use of alternative technologies, such as synthetic biology. Last year, for instance, scientists engineered E. coli to churn out a biofuel that resembled gasoline. Continue reading →

Let’s pretend that you’re a cyberterrorist, or if you prefer, a rogue agent working for a super-secret government intelligence program that develops cyberweapons. And let’s further imagine that you’ve developed a pretty cool computer virus that steals money from people’s bank accounts, and you’re really itching to try it out against somebody, say, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank. When’s the best time to deploy your little bundle of digital joy? Continue reading →

The sun will hopefully be the energy source of the future, but currently, solar power provides less than 1%of global energy. The reason isn’t due to a conspiracy among fossil fuel companies, as some media outlets apparently believe, but because of multiple inherent problems with solar technology. In a nutshell, there is a tradeoff between efficiency and cost.

For example, the current world-record for efficiency (i.e., the ability to convert light into electricity) is 44.7%, held by a multi-junction solar cell used in concentrated photovoltaics. However, for various reasons, such systems are still expensive. Cheaper solar cells, such as the ones you can mount on your roof, are more reasonably priced but have efficiences only around 10 to 20%. Thus, the “holy grail” is to design a solar cell with high efficiency and low cost. Continue reading →